The Bible is Misunderstood because of Minunderstanding People.
Bible inerrancy, Bible authenticity, Bible infallibility, when looked at in light of the facts that disprove such phrases and debated, the debate becomes lost in endless religious tradition of interpretation and subtle questions of translation. The claims of religious believers that the Bible is what the above states puts the religionists in the position of not just claiming that the original manuscripts were free of error, but also the translation from the errant copies by fallible men who produced the Bible is the end result of error-free copying and translating.
Such a held position is faulty and a simple reference to the Bible itself is all that is needed to disprove such a claim.
Look at Gen. 32:30, "...for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
But, John 1:18 says, "No man has seen God at any time..."
Is it possible for both of these statements to be true? There is either a
factual error or a translation error...either way, there is an error.
Therefore, the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, as purported by
religionists, is falsified. I am aware of the comeback of the
religionist regarding the defense they put forward...they look up the different meanings of the word in the Hebrew or Greek and choose the
one that can break the contradiction. Their reasoning may go like
this...the word "seen" or the word "face" means one thing in the Genesis verse and something else in the John verse.
The
logical problem in such reasoning is that it amounts to saying that the
translator should have chosen a different word to use in one of the two
scriptures in order to avoid the resulting logical contradiction that
now appears in English...which is saying, the translator made an error.
If no translation error occurred, then an error of fact exists in at
least one of the two scriptures.
The
contextual “context” is irrelevant in cases like this where such
declarative statements are stated such as; “no one has seen God” and “I
have seen God.” If one is prepared to allow for the possibility of
translator or transcriber errors, then the claim of Biblical inerrancy
is completely undermined since no originals exist to serve as a
benchmark against which to identify the errors.
Daniel Wallace is a noted Greek scholar and professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. In his paper entitled “Why So Many Versions?” Wallace makes the following statement -“...we must remember that the King James Bible of today is not the King James of 1611. It has undergone three revisions, incorporating more than 100,000 changes!”
The King James Bible has been changed in some form or another many times one source sites. "There have been changes made in the KJV in the following years: 1613, 1616, 1617, 1618, 1629, 1630, 1633, 1634, 1637, 1638, 1640, 1642, 1653, 1659, 1675, 1679, 1833, 1896, 1904."
"All of the above changes retained the original name. However, in recent times, in additions to changes being made in the text, even the very name of the Bible has changed. Few people realize that all these Bible Versions listed below are nothing more than revisions of the original 1611 King James Version;"
"Revised Version
American Version
Revised Standard Version
American Standard Version
New Revised Standard Version
New American Standard Version
King James Version II (KJII) (renamed to Literal Translation of the Holy Bible)
King James for the 21st Century (KJ21)
King James 2000 (KJ2000)
The Literal Translation of the Holy Bible (LITV) (formerly named King James II)
Modern King James Version (MKJV)
New King James Version (NKJV)
Revised Authorised Version (RAV) (British edition of the NKJV)
Revised King James New Testament (RKJV)
The Third Millennium Bible (TMB)
Updated King James Version (UKJV)"
Daniel Wallace is a noted Greek scholar and professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. In his paper entitled “Why So Many Versions?” Wallace makes the following statement -“...we must remember that the King James Bible of today is not the King James of 1611. It has undergone three revisions, incorporating more than 100,000 changes!”
The King James Bible has been changed in some form or another many times one source sites. "There have been changes made in the KJV in the following years: 1613, 1616, 1617, 1618, 1629, 1630, 1633, 1634, 1637, 1638, 1640, 1642, 1653, 1659, 1675, 1679, 1833, 1896, 1904."
"All of the above changes retained the original name. However, in recent times, in additions to changes being made in the text, even the very name of the Bible has changed. Few people realize that all these Bible Versions listed below are nothing more than revisions of the original 1611 King James Version;"
"Revised Version
American Version
Revised Standard Version
American Standard Version
New Revised Standard Version
New American Standard Version
King James Version II (KJII) (renamed to Literal Translation of the Holy Bible)
King James for the 21st Century (KJ21)
King James 2000 (KJ2000)
The Literal Translation of the Holy Bible (LITV) (formerly named King James II)
Modern King James Version (MKJV)
New King James Version (NKJV)
Revised Authorised Version (RAV) (British edition of the NKJV)
Revised King James New Testament (RKJV)
The Third Millennium Bible (TMB)
Updated King James Version (UKJV)"
Left
with only error-prone copies of the originals translated by error-prone
men, tutored by agenda driven religious erroring superiors, the boat of
inerrancy and infallibility is full of holes and the ship sinks because
of the Bible itself.
The Bible is the written word that points to Jesus the Word, is it not time to stop idolizing the Bible and allow it to be the tool the Spirit of Truth uses to honor and glorify Jesus, the Living Word of God?
The Bible is the greatest book in existence...but it is not to be used to discredit Jesus or usurp Him as "The Living Word" of God by false claims of infallibility, inerrancy and the only authorized version. Because King James authorized it does not mean God did.
The Bible is the written word that points to Jesus the Word, is it not time to stop idolizing the Bible and allow it to be the tool the Spirit of Truth uses to honor and glorify Jesus, the Living Word of God?
The Bible is the greatest book in existence...but it is not to be used to discredit Jesus or usurp Him as "The Living Word" of God by false claims of infallibility, inerrancy and the only authorized version. Because King James authorized it does not mean God did.
Part 1.
ReplyDeleteYou quote Gen. 22:30, "...for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Chapter 22doesn`t have 30 verses so I presume you mean Gen.32:30.
Actually, the contradiction exists in our understanding--not in the Bible, which is always the case with alleged biblical contradictions.
The solution is simple. All you need to do is accept what the Bible says. If the people of the OT were seeing God, the Almighty God, and Jesus said that no one has ever seen the Father (John 6:46), then they were seeing God Almighty but not the Father. It was someone else in the Godhead. I suggest that they were seeing the Word before He became incarnate. In other words, they were seeing Jesus.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Face to face here is a figure of speech indicating close communion with God.
Jacob was on run because of a deep-seated family dispute without getting into much detail. He needeth victory over this so he wrestled with God all night in prayer. God finally visited him and made him cripple has a reminder of his struggles. Whether you say Jacob wrestled with God, a man or an angel it doesn`t change situation.
Consider Jacob’s “seeing” God as he wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32:24-30). He wrestled from night until daybreak with this heavenly being and eventually said: “I have seen God face to face.” Was it really God that Jacob saw? No, he did not see God but instead witnessed a representative of God.
E.G. Sewell provided a partial answer to this when he wrote:
When Jacob is represented as saying he saw God, it was only an angel of God that appeared to him in the form of a man. In Hosea it is called an angel so that in that case Jacob did not see the face of God at all, but only an angel of God (1921, p. 274, emp. in orig.).
Who Jacob saw here was the pre incranate Christ. It was God the son, not God the father. There are other places where they saw God the son in Old Testament. When the three Hebrew children were in fiery furnace Nebuchadnezzar the king, looked in and said the fourth man looked like the Son of God.
Part 2.
ReplyDeleteIf God is a Trinity, then John 1:18 is not a problem either because in John chapter one, John writes about the Word (Jesus) and God (the Father). In verse 14 it says the Word became flesh. In verse 18 it says no one has seen God. Since Jesus is the Word, God then, refers to the Father. This is typically how John writes of God: as a reference to the Father. We see this verified in Jesus' own words in John 6:46 where He said that no one has ever seen the Father. Therefore, Almighty God was seen but not the Father. It was Jesus before His incarnation. There is more than one person in the Godhead, and the doctrine of the Trinity must be true.
Renowned Bible scholar R.A. Torrey noted:
We must remember first of all that two statements which in terms flatly contradict one another may be both of them absolutely true, for the reason that the two terms are not used in the same sense in the two statements (1907, p. 80).
I remember as a boy I use to have a book called, “The Battle For The Bible” which I cherished as the best book next to Bible. I haven`t had it now for at least 10 years. Probably I should order it again.
Back there 30 or 40 years ago the battle for the Bible was usually with the atheist and false cults but today the battle has changed a bit. It also includes apostate evangelicals who instead of preaching the whole counsel of God as Paul said he preached, they are trying to find fault with the whole counsel of God. A lot of their Bible schools are no longer teaching that the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God and as a result many come out of our collages apostate before they even start.
Many love preachers have got to attack the Bible as a book of errors in order to push there false love doctrine which is nothing less than what the Bible describes as a doctrine of devils. I don`t have time to give quotes and prove this now other then to say if they believed the Bible to be the inspired Word of God they would have to admit that God is not just a God of love but that He is a God of wrath, a God of judgment, a God who is a killer, and that He gets angry and so on.
Paul speaks about those who would rather find fault with the Word then preach it as truth in 1Tim. 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.
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